


Swear

by Mordu



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Death, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-22
Updated: 2016-09-22
Packaged: 2018-08-16 15:09:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8106970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mordu/pseuds/Mordu
Summary: Reaper tries to kill Mercy. Keyword: Tries. A little snippet from an RP that I ended up liking a lot and figured would make a nice little drabble.





	

　 　 He didn’t die, but he certainly _wished_ he did. 

　 　 Whatever awful force of nature brought him back, did so in _pieces_. Molecules, to be exact. One would argue you couldn’t have felt it– being de-materialized– but he did. Despite not having solid nerves, he felt it and all of it’s wrathful fury as it devoured his body whole. 

　 　 He reached out, grabbed hold of whatever he could– the staff– and held it for dear life. A hand, blackened from ash, leading down to an arm that was hardly connected. And that arm led down to but a mass of blackened _smoke_ , a cloud of nanomachines that quickly began to depart and dissipate. Like a braid being undone, the fibers of his arm began to fray, and eventually his grip on the staff loosened, the rest of his body floating away with the rest of the ash. 

　 　 And he recalled– so clearly– trying to say her name.  
　 　 Whether she heard it he had no idea.

...

　 　He couldn’t remember what came after that. No matter how hard he tried, he simply couldn’t recall it– where he ended up reforming again, what he felt. Maybe it was better that way; He was probably in a lot of pain anyway. 

　 　 But what was worse: Remembering the pain, or living it? 

　 　 Today, he was miserable; Every day, he was miserable. No matter how many lives he took to replenish himself, no matter how comfortable or how uncomfortable he tried to make himself, it was _always_ the same. His body was in a constant state of decay ( and regeneration ) and he could feel _everything_. Truth be told, it probably felt better than getting shot– though his memory of that was hazy, too– but those wounds didn’t hurt forever, not like these. 

　 　Every nanomachine in his being was _hungry_ , like a swarm of vicious insects, but they were under _his_ command. Something like that sounded so glorious, but not when those vicious creatures were literally _all_ of you, and they _all_ wanted something. He thought that maybe– just _maybe–_  if he killed enough, that the pain would go away. Foolish, in hindsight, but he was desperate. And then he thought, that maybe if he stopped killing, that they’d all just die off, and that he would die. When that didn’t work, he went even further into trying to commit mass genocide on the machines that made up his entire body, and he got creative. 

　 　Electromagnetic pulses seemed to do the trick. The first time, he thought he’d died. Gods, how brilliant it was to just be in _silence_ – Gabriel was _sure_ he’d died, completely convinced. Everything was so beautifully black and quiet, and for once he could think to himself. But then, he realized just how ignoramus that was– If he had truly died, right then and there, then why did he still have memory, and thought, and _emotion_. 

　 　It was then he discovered that being dismantled into molecular pieces was _not_ death, but something far _worse_. When his body reformed, and half of it was solid and the rest of it was some disgusting oozing mess of smoke and sludge– that was when he knew exactly what the meaning of torment was. 

　 　And it only took him once to realize that he was simply… _not going to die_. Not any time soon, at least. Sure, the nanomachines would give out eventually if he kept at it, but was it really worth it? How many times would it take to run them all dry? His imagination was vivid; What if he only destroyed half of them, and came back missing parts of himself? The pains of simply being alive were not the only things that kept him up at night. 

　 　If one thought Gabriel was a twisted man before all of this, they’d not seen a glimpse of who he was now. Angry and vengeful, that was all he was– not an ounce of love or kindness in any sect of his soul– if he even still had one of those. Definitively, a being of pure, unadulterated hatred– and he knew just how to focus his darkness into something _sharp_. 

　 　 And yet, when he saw her once more, grabbed hold of her hair and pressed the muzzle of his gun right up to her throat… he couldn’t find the strength to pull the trigger. 

　 　 In his mind, before now, he blamed _her_ for this. The events leading up to his death could not be associated with her, but being made into what he was now? That was attributed to one thing and one thing only, and that thing was created and operated by her. And she’d used it, so foolishly– an untested device that’s effects were a trial on nature itself– to try and bring him back, knowing very well that things could go horribly wrong. And they did. 

　 　 He’d dreamed of this moment, planned it all out in his head, exactly how he’d enter her office, at what time and on what date. In his dreams, he’d counted the number of _steps_ that it would take to get to her, the number of _bullets_ he’d bury in her body. Everything had gone right up until this point, where he couldn’t even muster up enough strength in _one fucking finger to pull a fucking trigger._


End file.
